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Last weekend the first tournament of the year took place in Antwerp. It’s called First blood and this year it was a masters format event. 23 players showed up and considering about 8 regular attendees had other engagements this year, that’s an amazing number (for Belgium).

Once again a special thanks to the Puppeteers and Pressganger Nicolaï (Rynar) for hosting the event and making it a great experience each year.

I took my convergence to the event and ended up going 2/2, which is a good result considering I just started playing my lists around New Year.

TIER 1
—Requirements—
The army can only include the models listed above.
—Benefits—
Enigma Foundries are FA 4.

TIER 2
—Requirements—
The army includes two or more Enigma Foundries.
—Benefits—
Reduce the point cost of Enigma Foundries by 1.

TIER 3
—Requirements—
The army includes three or more Clockwork Vessel units.
—Benefits—
Clockwork Vessel units gain Advance Deployment.

TIER 4 – SELECTED
—Requirements—
The army includes two or more heavy vectors.
—Benefits—
For each heavy vector in Axis’ battlegroup, place a heavy warjack wreck marker anywhere within 20″ of the back edge of Axis’ deployment zone after terrain has been placed but before either player deploys his army. Wreck markers cannot be placed within 3″ of a terrain feature or another wreck marker.

We played 4 rounds in total. The first round was Destruction:

My opponent was Davy, a Cryx player from Hasselt. His caster pairing was Denny3 / Scaverous.

I looked at his lists and saw some armor cracking potential and I was unsure if my Lucant list would deal with it well enough. He also didn’t have much shooting at all (aside from a Kraken in one list) which meant deceleration wouldn’t do much.

I haven’t put my Lucant across from armor cracking enough yet to judge if the list can or cannot take certain match combos and that makes me reach for Axis more then I should. With Axis I feel I can force things by throwing models into the opposition over and over. It’s the idea where lots of small punches form one big punch over time I guess. And a massive wall of models is a massive wall of models, the other army needs a large volume of attacks so it can A remove lots of models and B remove more than I can return turn after turn.

I chose my axis list and he opted to use his Denny3 list.

Deneghra, the Soul Weaver – WJ: +4

– Skarlock Thrall

– Deathripper – PC: 4

– Kraken – PC: 19

Bane Lord Tartarus – PC: 4

Necrotech – PC: 1

– Scrap Thrall

Soul Trapper – PC: 1

Soul Trapper – PC: 1

Bane Knights – Leader & 9 Grunts: 10

Bane Thralls – Leader & 9 Grunts: 8

– Bane Thrall Officer & Standard – Bane Thrall Officer & Standard 3

I don’t remember who won the roll off, but I do think Davy got to choose sides, just not if it was because he opted to or because I chose to have the first turn.

I was able to somewhat steer the flow of the Cryx troops by putting axis’s razor wall next to the objective at the edge of the zone, leaving a gap between the objective and the wall that was smaller than a small base.

Having more troops than the Cryx list and limiting the access to the zone meant the Cryx troops would not be free to move all around as they pleased. The Kraken also flanked the troops limiting their advance in the other direction as well.

I got lucky early on when one Reductor was able to spray the arcnode and took out one of the Soul trappers in the process. This removed any hope of collecting should on that flank for Cryx.

Most bane knights died to POW 13 sprays from the reductors taking few victims in return. The bane thralls came in small numbers bit by bit and were easy to deal with that way.

Tartarus made a charge and was counter charged by the Conservator and with Onslaught + hand of Vengeance he was killed on the spot, not even able to make his charge attack.

The main problem for me was the Kraken touching the zone and making scoring impossible. It took me 3 turns and the feat but I took it down.

I the end I had the zone swarmed with troops and all he had left was Denny and a Scarlock. Denny removed quite a bit of my troops herself, however casters don’t contest…so it didn’t mean much for the scenario.

Attrition is was the main tactic (and the general theme for convergence at this point really). And when you say attrition you say time consumption. At the end clocks were running low and mistakes were made. I was too obsessed with setting things up so that Denny would be tempted to go on a killing spree while making the assassination look less likely (full camp and a circle of 6 ADO models surrounding the caster). With only 3 min left on the other end of the clock tempting the other side to spend lots of time on attacks was a decent play. In hindsight I could have ran my caster into the zone and scored the final 2 points. Instead I scored only 1. Denny made her attempt to assassinate Axis and I was lucky no dice spikes happened and got away with 0 damage. Won the game with 5-0 on scenario.

All-in-all a good game, first time facing Cryx after switching to Convergence again, so not a bad result.

The 2nd game I was matched with another Cryx player. A Dutch player called Sietse. I can’t remember what his second list was in the pairing but he opted to drop his pSkarre list.

I deployed pretty wide so I could get my units all over the board ASAP. On turn 2 I managed to shoot one of the Soulhunters with a Reductor (High rolls do happen). I moved up conservatively trying not to give away the entire army.

Seeing both Gerlak and Tartarus on the other side gave me a headache since those combined alone would tilt attrition in his favor and that’s without considering the feat and other attacks.

I felt like it was going to be a long hard battle and I would have to keep focused in order to stay in the game.

Then on his 2nd turn he feats and sends Gerlak in. He pacmans his way around and ends up smack in the middle of my troops. I decide to counter charge with the Conservator who has Iron Aggression and Hand of Vengeance. I manage to do only 3 damage, could have been a bit better tbh, on an average role that should have been 5 damage (pow 17 + 10 = 27 vs armor 22) and a slight spike of rolling 13 would have meant Gerlak was no more. I did roll some amazing dice on the soul hunter before so I guess it all evens out in the end ^^.

Gerlak continues his pac man chain and I decide to counter charge him with my caster. This time I do manage to kill him outright, however it also lost me the game. Axis got charged by 4 Sat Raiders under feat (desperate pace and good speed get you places).

I took 2 attacks of which the last one only needed to do 1 point.

I shouldn’t have been so greedy, and it would have saved my casters life. That being said, I don’t know how much of my army would have survived that turn. Gerlak pretty much removed as much as I can return on his own.

I do have some ideas on how to play it next time. I just made a rookie mistake in my first game with Axis against a pretty amazing caster played by a pretty decent player, so I’m not feeling too bad about the outcome there.

In my third game I went up against Eric, a Khador player from Gent. His pairing was Old Witch / Karchev.

The scenario was Two Fronts:

Both Karchev and Old witch had a ton of armor in their list, and while old witch could be handled by Lucan just fine, Karchev seemed like he would be able to take that list down a little too smoothly. Axis may not have the armor cracking required to take on any of these lists but then he does have enough bodies to keep it busy for a long time while he nibbles at the armor.

I dropped my Axis list, he opted to drop Old Witch, and this was the list:

I was able to place my razor wall in a good spot so it blocked the movement of the kayazy early on, which bought me some freedom. He put the kayazy in one zone, the conquest and Spriggan in the other. Behemoth stood in between the zones. The old with was in a trench at the end of his friendly zone with the kayazy and the war dog close.

I swarmed my friendly zone with a unit of obstructors and a unit of reductors; a unit of obstructors remained more central and the remaining unit of Reductors and obstructors went into the enemy zone.

I had 2 big issues, the kayazy could get to defense levels no combine could hit without a dice spike with Iron Flesh and the combination of Conquest / Spriggan / Behemoth was challenging my power output on the damage end.

I ended up clocking myself, I removed the spriggan, the conquest was half gone and the Behemoth didn’t look to alive either (still alive though). During one of the old witch’s killing sprees she did get counter charged and took a big hit from my Conservator.

I did something then which may put me on the podium for sportsmanship but it also lost me the game. I reminded the other player that the Old witch isn’t immune to free strikes when she does her little move after killing a model. The free strike (with Onslaught and Hand of Vengeance) would have almost certainly ended her and won me the game.

Still it was a fun and certainly challenging game for both sides.

My 4th round I faced Tim, a Menoth player from Antwerp and he was Iron listing Anston Durst.

I had played Axis 3 rounds, and so I really wanted to drop Lucant at least one time, just to be able to get some more experience with him. The benefit of facing a player who iron lists is that you can choose whatever list you want and you already know what you will be facing up front.

I saw nothing that really threatened my Lucant list except the jacks if they combined their efforts, but on a split scenario I could make that work.

In my second turn I was facing Anstons feat. The feat could have been an issue however, the 2nd jack was on the flank and a few inches out of Anston’s control and Anston for some reason hadn’t used cornerstone, so drags were a possibility.

I had the Axiom Aim and shoot the Reckoner in front of Anston and I sadly left it on 1 box. Considering this was the only jack in control for the next turn, and it had lost its cortex, it was still good since all real treats to my models were not in a position where they could make a dent.

Both TEP’s just sprayed what they could all game long removing a nice amount of the infantry. The Menoth player ended the game because he realized he couldn’t muster the force required to go up against and axiom and 2 Teps and behind the 3 huge bases there was no chance of getting to Lucant either.

Conclusion

2 win / 2 loss is a result I’m happy with at this point in time. Especially considering it could have been 3/1 looking at my 3rd round.

I’m not going to make changes to my lists as I didn’t spot any real flaws or shortcomings I could solve by swapping models. Convergences doesn’t have multiple options for each role at this point and the units that are there do a solid job.

All I really need to do now is get more practice. Mainly to see what matchups each of my lists can or can’t handle, there is some middle ground between the 2 lists and it’s not so clear which one comes out on top in that area.

I’m having fun and I’m improving with the faction I like the most fluff / looks wise so all is good.

My next painting project will be Axis, I’m currently making the base for him, after that I’ll start painting, so more painting news soon…

In my airbrush post I added a teaser for a custom objective I was creating.

The goal was to create a ruined statue of sorts. Which would fit in with most of my armies. I saw some good builds using the Convergence large wreck marker as a base.

For the best effect I wanted an angelic figure for the statue. At first I experimented with the Clockwork Angels, and they didn’t look bad, they just looked rather tiny on the large base.

Looking for a larger angelic figuring I ended up with Aurora’s model. I had the model unpainted gathering dust for a while. I’m not saying she’s bad or anything don’t get me wrong, but I don’t like playing her so to me this was an unused model.

I’m happy I decided to use Aurora as the result is pretty cool.

I applied the paint on the wreck marker with the airbrush and I also applied the silver to the wings using the airbrush. The other metals and washes were done with a brush.

So I decided it was finally time for me to start using an airbrush. The main reason would be that it saves me quite a bit of time when painting and certain results are much harder to pull off when using a brush.

I’ll still remain a dedicated brush user while experimenting with the airbrush, I can think of a multitude of things I simply won’t be able to pull off with an airbrush for a long while.

To get me started I asked others who are more experienced with an airbrush to give me some directions on what to buy. Something I would advise everyone starting out, as it can be a bit tricky to choose the correct setup when starting out with no prior experience.

The airbrush I got is the Badger Renegade, a dual action airbrush with a top feed.

I can confirm that you really need to tune it a bit when you first use the airbrush. My first assumption was that it would be set somewhat ok so I could start spraying straight away, however this is not the case. Fortunately tuning the setup of the airbrush isn’t rocket science.

I’m not 100% sure which model compressor I have so I’ll get to that in a future article.

I started out giving priming a try. When I primed my minis before I used a spray can, and I sprayed from 4 directions (front, back and both sides). This meant spraying one side on one or more mini’s, letting it all dry for a good 5 minutes, turning the models and spraying the next side. As a result priming a model would always take me anywhere between 30-40 minutes.

Because with spray priming I noticed that black primer made it much harder to see the details, and white primer isn’t always a good plan when the end result needs to be dark, I always used grey primer.

At the LGS they only had the black airbrush primer in larger size bottles (in stock, I’m sure the can order the other one’s) so I decided to give the black primer a go. I primed a unit and was amazed at how the details were all visible with the black primer.

I will most likely use black / gray or white depending on the final result I’m going for, but it’s really nice to know that with the airbrush I can have such a nice result when priming in black.

Since I felt I wanted to see just how amazing airbrushes could be I decided to make my first test layers yellow. I wanted to test out a new scheme for Convergence and at the same time see what my options were for applying yellow (a color notorious for not being easy to paint).

The first conclusion was that even over a black primer yellow covered quite well using the airbrush, which was an amazing thing to find out.

I experimented a bit more and while in the end the shadows I was hoping to create were far from what I was hoping to achieve I did manage to get a nice color transition on the model and I was even able to pull off a slight osl effect. Applying that osl made me realize I won’t be doing this on the models I’m trying to get above tabletop quality as it can ruin a model that is otherwise painted really well, and I want to practice more.

Still the result is not too bad for a first try. I did some panel/ edge highlighting to make it pop more ofc.

Painting yellow was fun, but a more practical test was required to really see if I could start applying airbrush painting for my regular painting schemes.

I still hadn’t gotten around to painting my Helldiver so he was my primary victim. He was already primed so no priming to do but no real problem.

I normally base coat the armor plates on Cryx jacks with Caliban Green and then layer over it with Castellan green. Now I repeated this process using the airbrush.

The result was more than ok, it saved me time and it was smooth as silk. I applied the usual washes and edge highlights to the plates and finished the rest of the model as before with the brush (too much detail work/ not using masking yet so airbrush was out of the question for the other areas of the model.

The result can be seen below (and I personally think it’s a good result)

Tonight I will start working on an objective marker I have Created using the Aurora model and a Convergence wreck marker. I may even try out using some pigments on it, no sure yet.

Harm is far from an unknown player and I knew it would be an interesting game. Also Cryx vs Cryx is never dull.

I opted to play my eDenny list against him, as eDenny is pretty decent against Cryx. I decided I would have Nightmare select Deathjack as its prey and I also used my tier4 bonus to put pursuit on him.

He had the withershadow combine in his list so putting 3 upkeeps out and risking 9 damage as a result of disbinding wasn’t a good plan. Putting one upkeep on a piece that you normally like to move around was a solid move in my book, as I hoped it would affect his deployment.

Both the withershadow and Deathjack ended up on the right side of the board and this made it so that I could put upkeeps out on the left side without having to fear them being removed.

The game was one big attrition grind on both sides, in the end I was up on attrition by more than a bit, but my clock ran out giving him the win. Under normal odds I would have lost nightmare, but fate decided otherwise as Death Jack missed all but one of his attacks and did minimal damage.

In the end it proves that attrition isn’t just a game of killing more than you lose, it’s also meant to occupy your opponent and make the clock count. All in all it was a fun game and time management will forever be my weakness (until I finally manage to fix that flaw ofc)

Harm ended up winning the event.

Round 2

Scenario: Fire Support

My opponent was Nele, a new warmachine player and she opted to play eHaley.

When I read Nele’s list sheet, I noticed no pHaley and no upkeep removal in the eHaley list, this made me instantly choose my eDenny list.

For my Tier 4 bonus, I opted to put Marked for death on Gorman, Pursuit on the boomhowlers and curse of shadows on the Defender.

Nele played a decent game, however she’s still new to the game and made some mistakes, and I did give a few pointers when she opted for certain abilities etc.

The game ended with a 5-0 on control points, due to 2 turns of killbox and a dominate on the flag.

Round 3

Scenario: Incursion

My opponent was Koen Vliegen, I have met the guy in numerous events, but we always seemed to dodge each other when it came to pairings, until now. He plays Retribution, and as a former ret player I do have some insight into their abilities.

His pairing was Issyria / Garryth.

I contemplated my list choice for a bit as the Issyria list seemed like it would be his drop, but then it had no magic weapons and he had plenty in his Garryth list.

I had played my eDenny list 2 times now so I would lock myself into 3shade if I dropped her once more.

He won the roll, opted to go first and I chose the side with the wall (because you know).

His list came at me like an avalanche, making Satyxis raiders look slow. Turn1 he was pretty much at my advanced deployment zone.

I had to remove as much as I could, so I loaded up the Kraken and started shooting. The small gun made some shots and the results were not impressive at all. The main gun shot at a ua, missing and the shot drifted 6 to 6, and landed on top of Issyria and Syslyss, one boosted roll later no more syslyss.

The blackbanes ran up and tried to tie up as much of the rifleman and one unit of invictors. Because the Phoenix was the only model with a magic weapon, I could keep up the interference game for a bit.

The soulhunters tried their best to thin out the halbardiers staring them in the face, sadly their efforts didn’t add much.

After the attrition had turned against me I had but one option and that was to look for any viable way to assassinate the other caster, something 3Shade is pretty good at.

At the start of my opponents turn it seemed such an opportunity wouldn’t present itself and my arcnode losing its arcnode the number of available options didn’t exactly grow.

Then it happened, the caster was moved into a position where only 1 model blocked line of sight. An assassination plan was forming.

Issyriah was at 3 focus making her armor 16. There was at least 1 blackbane in range to run up for the feat. Kraken would be able to get los with its 5″ of movement and would be loaded up with full focus and full corpses. 3shade had a decent charge target that would bring him within 8″ of Issyria so he could use siphon bolt.

One problem factor could be Issyria’s ability Arcane Vortex could make things more interesting, but on average it was a sure thing.

I activated the blackbanes to prepare for the feat. 3shade charged the halberdier and boxed it. He then feated and started siphon bolting. The first bolt was directed at the model blocking los. It hit and the model was no more. 3Shade cast Siphon bolt once more hitting Issyria and doing a nice amount of damage, the second bolt hit the target as well leaving the caster on 2 boxes. The 3rd bolt hit and I decided to boost damage, just because.

Win on assassination.

Now the other player forgot about the arcane vortex, so I decided to do some calculation on how it would have affected my plan.

From the start 3shade had 1 goal, attempt to free up the Line of sight and remove the focus on the caster so the damage output on the Kraken’s shots goes up.

If the ability had been triggered it would have triggered for a max amount of 3 times as there was only 3 focus on the caster. With 3Shades focus pool even without siphoning this would have been possible. The Kraken would get a minimum of 3 shots (d3+1 means 2 minimum). And on average it would have been 4 shots.

If we assume the lowest number of shots will be available, then we can shoot at the model blocking los using the first pow 12, we boost for damage and this would remove it with all but the lowest rolls. Then the remaining shots on the small gun would be damaging at roll -1. Any damage done here is good as the main gun would be damaging at roll +4. This actually means that a shot from the main gun with a boosted damage roll needs to roll 1 more than average in order to one shot the caster.

An average roll on 3 dice is 10, the roll is at +4 so an average roll would be 14 in this case and Issyria has 15 boxes, so rolling an 11 on 3 dice would one shot her.

Of course rolling a double one to hit is possible, rolling more is also possible. When rolling the to hits on the siphon bolts, the double 1’s were also possible, however they didn’t happen and it resulted in a clean kill.

In the end I was happy my assassination plan proved solid and the assassination was over before all my pieces had activated.

This battle is solid proof that even if a battle is moving towards sure defeat, an opponent can still make a move that opens up a path to victory.

Round 4

Scenario: Outflank

For the last round of the day I got to play Niels de Vlieger, a player from my local meta. In all honesty I did way better than I would have expected facing his Legion list.

From the start he was picking off models left and right using either hit and run tactics with the angels or ranged attacks with the ravagore. The hex hunters want for one side of the board and the beasts remained central and close to the other zone.

I had deathjack occupy the right zone, for 2 reasons, 1 I didn’t want him to end up taking armor piercing hits and so the opposite table side from the angels seemed more than ok, 2ndly I wanted spell slinging capability without moving eDenny / my arcnode to much to one side of the field.

Through some toughs and the recursion between drudges and mc tralls I was able to keep pushing models into the zone for a while.

I made lots of use of eDenny’s weapon teleporting several lights that came out of the pot in front of DJ and out of the zone. I also managed to land a hellmouth on the pot removing all but 1 of its grunts.

eDenny ended up dominating the right zone while eVayl did the same to the left zone. We both tried to prevent scoring as much as possible and we ended the game at 4-5 in Niel’s advantage, resulting in a loss for me, but it was a good game.

Niels ended up on the 5th place so congrats for that, I ended up on the 11th spot. Which isn’t too shabby, considering 2 of my opponents were well above my current level, and as such winning against them wasn’t impossible, but it would have been a surprise for sure ^^.

I did take home one prize, I was awarded the best painting award, which was a nice reward for all the effort I put into having 2 fully painted lists ready for the event. A special thanks to Christophe because he declined the reward, having won it several times he made a really nice gesture and told the organizer he wanted it to go to someone else.

It was a nice event, we had a ton of fun, but we were happy when it was over 4 round days are hard 😀

The next few weeks I’ll be working on my play, hoping to improve for the next event, which will be on the 25th of April at Black Border Roeselare.

I added some visual content (caster pics and army lists) in this new video. I also added some youtube sound so it isn’t just silent video. And to top it off I also doubled the speed so it’s not 1h46 anymore.

I plan on improving on the art and extras I add to these videos, but it will be a slow grow and I hope to improve on the concept with each video.

This weekend I finished work on a Defiler, a Warwitch Siren, a Necrotech, Rengrave, Ragman and Aiakos.
As always when I set out to have my lists painted, I’m very happy when it’s done. What I’m even happier about at this point is that I now have a fully painted list pairing for both Skorne and Cryx.
In short I will still be painting more then I should, but the models I paint up now won’t have a deadline and that takes off some pressure for sure.
The following weeks I’ll try to get the models I’m missing for a Xerxis 2 list I’m going to try out finished. I’ll take my sweet time because one of those models is Xerxes himself and I want him to be painted decently as it’s a sweet model and it deserves a sweet paint job.
Anyhow, here are the pictures:

I’m currently editing 2 battrep videos and I hope to have them on youtube soon, I’ll post when they are added.

I finished the drudges early last week and managed to paint up the Overlords and unit leaders this weekend.

I kept the overlords / unit leaders simple and it worked out great. black base, grey highlight and a wash was all the leather needed. Along with the drudges it was a nice change as they didn’t involve the use of my usual Cryx paint scheme.

Here are the pictures:

And a preview of what I have on the painting table right now. These are the remaining models of my 2 50 pts lists, so I can say I’m going to finish before my deadline ^^